HS Hockey Podcast - December 15

[YouthHockeyHub]

Hockey Podcast is now live. Commentary on

Our usual fun with Karl's rankings
CRAZY week that was
Demographics in Minnesota and how it relates to hockey (Karl led)
Andover Senior Wyatt Kaiser checks in with some hot takes and picks.

Link —>https://bit.ly/2RU2wKQ

[ClassAGuy]

Always enjoy the podcast....

I do wish you guys would do a little better on Class A. I understand you are all about the AA teams which is great but this year AA is well a little Lack Luster as this past week proved is anyone any good really besides the Dream Team at EP. I feel bad for Karl because you really have to work to find a Top 10 Team in AA lots of just average teams this year. The Edina's and East's and Tonka's are down and I am not sure the Lakeville's or Rosemount's can handle the big time of being legit yet.

However, I get it and I will hear all the chirps about Class A being JV but this year Class has a great top-end some awesome section races and legit Talent.

By the way, Northern Lakes Tony is in Section 5A!!! So that win over North Branch was a huge SECTION WIN... Not sure where you pulled 8A out of hasn't been that way for at least 3 or 4 years.

[7TIMECHAMPS]

Not sure that I agree with the statement that AA is lackluster this year. Need more talk about the same old Hermantown, Cathedral, EGF etc? Also don’t think a single A team makes the AA top 10. I guess Cathedral roles in at 10 on the dot with pagestat. Tony’s number 1 team Warroad is at 13. We will see how things shake out with more data I guess. Just not sure your statement was a fair assessment.

[Section 8 guy]

Fully agree 7.

[YouthHockeyHub]

Class A,

My apologies for getting the NL section wrong. Aitkin, Crosby, Pequot is close to everything, yet very far away at the same time. They were in 8A in 2017 when the Lightning made a decent run through the regular season.

That said, if you listen to our show regularly, I am confident with how much attention we give to Class A. Within the last two weeks, we did an entire segment on how good it is this year (D1 commits, teams by section, etc).

Best,

Tony

[ClassAGuy]

Class A,

My apologies for getting the NL section wrong. Aitkin, Crosby, Pequot is close to everything, yet very far away at the same time. They were in 8A in 2017 when the Lightning made a decent run through the regular season.

That said, if you listen to our show regularly, I am confident with how much attention we give to Class A. Within the last two weeks, we did an entire segment on how good it is this year (D1 commits, teams by section, etc).

Best,

Tony

Love the podcast juts saying I wish the Class A top 10 could get the same kind of attention at the AA top ten. All good though will love to keep listening anyways!

Not saying that Class A would beat AA either just saying this year Class AA is overall a little down. Why you had what you did last week no one is really that dominate but the Dream Team. I am hoping at AA we dont get yet another Lake Conference Champion.

[green4]

Fun Podcast, I made sure to check it out when I saw that you were going to be talking about Demographics in hockey.
Karl, I still remember reading your original article about it a few years ago and really enjoying it.

I actually just graduated from the U of M recently with an Urban Studies degree and I'm soon going to be back to try and get a MURP or MGIS degree. I read your article at a time where I was trying to figure stuff out and I was pretty confused. It was one of many things that helped me realize that this was a subject that I found really interesting and wanted to learn more about.

I had the chance to work for the City of Eden Prairie as an intern when I was in school. I was pretty surprised by a lot of what I saw there and I would not be surprised to see EP drop off in hockey in the future. I had not spent too much time in EP before, and assumed it to be a stereotypical rich suburb, which pockets of it totally are, but the biggest surprise was probably just how diverse of a housing stock they had.
I am not sure when the official downfall of Jefferson was, because they had that pretty good team in like 2008, but 2008 West Bloomington I think was a bit different than present day EP. I was pretty young then, so I could be wrong but I imagine West Bloomington was pretty much built out and EP is too for the most part but they are still building large housing development from recently sold farms in EP. It will be pretty interesting to see what happens in EP, I think they will be relevant for longer than the next 5 years, they still have a lot of young families moving in and wealthy people too. With a school that size they probably will have a chance, but I agree, they will probably start to drop in the future.


In my courses at the U, we would talk about people spreading out that we are seeing and that you talk about in your article, how people moved from Minneapolis down to Richfield, then to Bloomington and on to Burnsville, getting further and further away. But we started to see people wanting to move back into the cities, people moving back into Minneapolis and how this is affecting our current landscape. The rise in populations of Minneapolis and St. Paul has obviously had an impacted on costs and taxes keeping some people interested in City life but maybe unable to afford it. Richfield markets itself as the "Urban Suburb" and has had a lot of young people moving into some nice sized affordable homes. St. Louis Park kind of has its own suburbanization it feels like with people from Uptown. You start by living in the wedge and then you get a bit older and move out to excelsior and grand. But seriously, people seem to like St. Louis Park because of its close proximity to Minneapolis while being able to find a decent home that is not too expensive. I was looking at Tony's youth hockey hub rankings and saw SLP was ranked in the Peewee AA section. It I remember correctly, SLP had some pretty down years and were maybe even had a co-op with Hopkins or Minneapolis for youth hockey at one point, so seeing them ranked is a bit exciting to me.

In class we would try to predict what we thought would happen next, after all the suburbanization and the more recently action of people moving into the cities, did we think it was going to stick and people would live in the main city or would we see the first rings rebirth followed by the second rings etc.

So Karl, if you have the time, I am curious to get your prediction in regards to hockey and demographics. If we think places like EP are going to fade out and we are seeing STMA and Andover pick up, what will the next 10-20 years look like? Do you think places like Richfield, SLP or South St. Paul might get better? Will we see these exurbs come and go or will they stick?

[O-townClown]

Great stuff, green. Interesting discussions for sure.

[edgeless2]

AA is down this year anyone who thinks different is not in his lane! But the beauty of it is anything can happen in a one game knockout. 2010? Not sure on year. Minnetonka plays til 1am to beat Hill and had nothing left in the tank for a gift of a title to everyone’s favorite Hornets . Play the games boys. Maybe some of the underperforming teams can get coached up by the time sections start. This is the type of year that separate the wheat from the chafe for some of these highly touted coaches.

[karl(east)]

Fun Podcast, I made sure to check it out when I saw that you were going to be talking about Demographics in hockey.
Karl, I still remember reading your original article about it a few years ago and really enjoying it.

I actually just graduated from the U of M recently with an Urban Studies degree and I'm soon going to be back to try and get a MURP or MGIS degree. I read your article at a time where I was trying to figure stuff out and I was pretty confused. It was one of many things that helped me realize that this was a subject that I found really interesting and wanted to learn more about.

I had the chance to work for the City of Eden Prairie as an intern when I was in school. I was pretty surprised by a lot of what I saw there and I would not be surprised to see EP drop off in hockey in the future. I had not spent too much time in EP before, and assumed it to be a stereotypical rich suburb, which pockets of it totally are, but the biggest surprise was probably just how diverse of a housing stock they had.
I am not sure when the official downfall of Jefferson was, because they had that pretty good team in like 2008, but 2008 West Bloomington I think was a bit different than present day EP. I was pretty young then, so I could be wrong but I imagine West Bloomington was pretty much built out and EP is too for the most part but they are still building large housing development from recently sold farms in EP. It will be pretty interesting to see what happens in EP, I think they will be relevant for longer than the next 5 years, they still have a lot of young families moving in and wealthy people too. With a school that size they probably will have a chance, but I agree, they will probably start to drop in the future.


In my courses at the U, we would talk about people spreading out that we are seeing and that you talk about in your article, how people moved from Minneapolis down to Richfield, then to Bloomington and on to Burnsville, getting further and further away. But we started to see people wanting to move back into the cities, people moving back into Minneapolis and how this is affecting our current landscape. The rise in populations of Minneapolis and St. Paul has obviously had an impacted on costs and taxes keeping some people interested in City life but maybe unable to afford it. Richfield markets itself as the "Urban Suburb" and has had a lot of young people moving into some nice sized affordable homes. St. Louis Park kind of has its own suburbanization it feels like with people from Uptown. You start by living in the wedge and then you get a bit older and move out to excelsior and grand. But seriously, people seem to like St. Louis Park because of its close proximity to Minneapolis while being able to find a decent home that is not too expensive. I was looking at Tony's youth hockey hub rankings and saw SLP was ranked in the Peewee AA section. It I remember correctly, SLP had some pretty down years and were maybe even had a co-op with Hopkins or Minneapolis for youth hockey at one point, so seeing them ranked is a bit exciting to me.

In class we would try to predict what we thought would happen next, after all the suburbanization and the more recently action of people moving into the cities, did we think it was going to stick and people would live in the main city or would we see the first rings rebirth followed by the second rings etc.

So Karl, if you have the time, I am curious to get your prediction in regards to hockey and demographics. If we think places like EP are going to fade out and we are seeing STMA and Andover pick up, what will the next 10-20 years look like? Do you think places like Richfield, SLP or South St. Paul might get better? Will we see these exurbs come and go or will they stick?

Fun backstory green4. That post has had some remarkable staying power over the years.

The original article had a quick bit on the rebirth of center cities like Minneapolis, noting that, from a hockey perspective, that had led to some positive results at the youth level but had yet to really translate to HS, mostly because a lot of those Minneapolis youth kids went to HS at Breck, Blake, Benilde, etc. While I don't have my finger to the pulse of Minneapolis hockey, I don't get the sense that has changed. A lot of the newer residents are empty-nesters in condos, immigrants from countries with little history of hockey, and young people who aren't forming families yet and will likely move to the suburbs to do so. (I was one of those people in The Wedge for a few years before I made my way back north.) I'll be very curious to see if a resurgent St. Louis Park (whose school district does not have the baggage of Minneapolis Public Schools, whether that's deserved or not) can keep its kids around. I agree it's definitely worth watching, and if those inner suburbs can bring themselves back, it will be a good thing for both HS hockey and for intelligent urban planning. I think a St. Louis Park has a much greater chance of a resurgence than the city schools do.

For the most part, unless they're seeing extremely high end development, I'd expect most exurbs to rise and fall in the same cycle as past suburbs. It's not a speedy process, but I expect it to be pretty steady; the longer the development process takes, the larger a school's window for success. Despite the surge in Minneapolis/St. Paul population over the past decade or two, the growth rate remains noticeably higher on the fringes. I also think places with more natural amenities (lakes, rivers) that can keep property values high even as houses age will be better positioned for success than those built on converted farm fields. You can start to look out at the next frontiers...Shakopee's tie with Lakeville North is probably a very early sign of something, places like Farmington and Delano have had some hints of success that could become more sustained, you figure Mound-Westonka and Rogers are going to have moments before long. That said, it does seem like the 2nd ring suburbs are having some pretty good staying power, in part because their administrators and planners have learned from the mistakes of the first ring, and in part because some of them are just so large and pull from huge areas.

On a side note, I have a MURP from the U of M and would be happy to discuss that experience at some point. Always enjoy chances to bridge my hockey life and the world where I spend most of my waking hours.

[blueblood]

The relatively new community 2-rink complex in Shakopee with all its amenities, including high school locker rooms, and a energetic young boys high school coach, will likely draw the young mites needed to build long term success for that community.

If I recall, there starting to see success at the Squirt and Peewee levels.

As the saying goes, “If you build it, they will come.”

[hockey59]

The relatively new community 2-rink complex in Shakopee with all its amenities, including high school locker rooms, and a energetic young boys high school coach, will likely draw the young mites needed to build long term success for that community.

If I recall, there starting to see success at the Squirt and Peewee levels.

As the saying goes, “If you build it, they will come.”

I think the beautiful new arena in Proctor (given time) will have a similar effect. Many top end Proctor players (the past 20 years) have found their way on to the rosters at Duluth East, Duluth Marshall & HermantownIf they can put a stop to this, Proctor will potentially become a legitimate Class A threat (unlike de facto AA Hermantown)

[blueblood]

Very similar situation between those two communities. it's good for hometown hockey when investments for the kids can be made.

[kniven]

Very similar situation between those two communities. it's good for hometown hockey when investments for the kids can be made.

Yes indeed. You need cold ice to make ice

[blueblood]

That would be “Straight cash homey, aka knivey”!

[kniven]

That would be “Straight cash homey, aka knivey”!